Emotional Contact
by NullNoMore
Summary: Almost no one has next of kin in NLA. Still, the military, in the form of BLADE, has certain routines. Their response to BLADEs not safe in the field is more improvisational. All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but Lila and her OC-filled skell refueling station are mine.
1. Emotional Contact

**a/n: Lila meets Jack to drop off information about her refueling station. They do not discuss fuel at all.**

 **Not fluff.**

 **All the good stuff belongs to Monolith Soft, except for Lila.**

* * *

Sliding into the seat at the Barista Café, she knew something was wrong. The Commander's coffee cup was still full, but it clearly wasn't fresh. No wisps of steam visible on a drizzly day. He wasn't glowering at his comm device. He wasn't shouting at another BLADE. He was staring at the middle distance, a spot on the pavement about 2 meters behind and directly through her.

The waitress brought her tea without prompting. She added milk, and took the unusual step of stirring it, hoping the clink of spoon on ceramic would change something. Finally, Lila leaned forward and touched his knuckles with a fingertip. "Sir?"

He didn't startle. He looked up and summoned a rough smile. Completely artificial but huge. "Sorry, Lila. It's been a crap day."

"Already?" It was only 0600.

The smile didn't fade, but his voice was strained. "I made 5 emotional contact visits."

"Oh." Almost no one had next of kin. Instead, BLADEs listed the names of people they thought should be contacted in the event of … loss.

"Usually it's Nagi does them, but he's got … he's busy today."

"Chausson coming up with brilliant ideas?"

"Yeah, we'll call it that," Jack rumbled.

Lila stored that bit of misinformation away for another time and concentrated on the Commander. "Thank you for doing it."

"Nagi's better at it. It means more to him, anyway. But it's important and I did it."

"Thank you."

He leaned back suddenly, looking up into the drizzle. "One of them, I checked her file. Third time she's been visited." The moisture in the air was making his face gleam. His eyes. "She tried to comfort me. Me. Said it was all right, that she'd have a new boyfriend by the end of the month. Then she tried to make a joke. Said that maybe I'd visit her boyfriend for a change."

There was a pause. Lila took a deep breath. "In other news, my station's hiring."

"Since when?"

"Since now."

"You need staff?"

"Desperately. For a few weeks, anyway."

"Let Eleonora know. I gotta shove off. Ping me the station numbers later."

"I will, sir."

* * *

 **Voidfish (Plural) by Rachel Rose Mitchell on loop. Set after in-game Ch. 8 but before The Lily and the Blade/11/One Punch KO.**


	2. Pizza and Plans

**a/n: That suddenly hired new temp at Lila's station sure is working out swell. Sarcasm.**

 **Big angst and small swears.**

 **All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, except these OCs, all of whom are wearing normal gear, not short shorts.**

* * *

"Hi ya, Ms. Brown. The usual, right? One regular slice of Primordia and a humongous Tank Top?"

The dark man beside her had a sudden coughing fit. It was hard to say in the dim light of Army Pizza, but Lila may have blushed. Her voice remained relaxed. "No, sorry, Sorrel, we're picking up for the station."

"Oh." The interim manager of the pizzeria looked at her comm device with consternation. "I don't remember seeing a large order."

Lila shrugged. "I didn't call ahead. Two cheese, one Sunset, the horrific garlic one that Gino likes, …"

"The Fuhgeddaboudit," Sorrel chirped.

".. and whatever's the special. The Ma-non special. All medium pies."

Sorrel gave Lila an apologetic smile. "It's gonna take a while. 20 minutes, maybe 30. Lunch hour rush, you know?"

"It's fine. Okay if we sit over here?" Lila gestured toward a red, over-upholstered bench.

"Of course. Can I get you some water?"

Both of the refueling station employees politely declined. As soon as Sorrel had walked away, Gino burst out with the laughter he'd been restraining. "Holy cow, Lila, you're killing me. You and a humongous slice of Tank Top."

"Shut up."

He kept laughing. "I'm dying. Think of the ad campaign. 'After work, I can't wait to get my ….' OW!" He shifted a handspan away from her along the bench, rubbing his shoulder.

"I said, shut up. I bring him lunch sometimes. No biggie."

"Enough that it's a regular order. Betcha it's his favorite." Gino grinned a knowing grin at her.

Lila rolled her eyes, then folded her hands in an exaggerated show of calm. "They named the stupid pizza after him. Of course it's his favorite." Her expression dared him to continue.

Gino didn't bother. He slumped against the plastic cushions and stuck his legs dangerously far into the aisle, his feet angled sharply, toes bouncing against each other. "Waste of time. Let's go back to the station and have them ping us when the 'zzas are done."

"You wanted to tell me something. About Elaine."

Gino slanted a surprised glance at his boss, but she was looking at something in the back of the restaurant. He frowned. "You told me to shut up about that too."

"Yeah. In the station. Where she was working. I don't know how good mim ears work."

"So now you want to know?"

"I always wanted to know. But I figured she didn't need to hear it."

Gino's foot jiggling had reached industrial levels of vibration. "Somebody better tell her, straight to her face even. She's got no business being in our station."

"I hired her, for a three week contract, direct off the missions board. They sent exactly what I asked for."

"She's a mess."

"She needs to learn the ropes. It's been three days. I've worn socks longer than that."

Gino jumped to his feet. "Lila, you better stop lying to me. She is an accident waiting to happen. Worse. She's gonna make it happen, just to get out of this duty."

Lila slowly swung her gaze up to his angry face. "Then we prevent that."

He tugged at his close-cropped hair. "Ugh. The fuel containment issue? Forgetting the locks, still, three straight days of it? Jamming that baby skell with heavy weight fuel? Because there is more that maybe you didn't know about."

"Tell me the more. I want to know."

"Waste of my breath. That chick wants to be out on missions and she's this close to hurting us in order to get bounced."

Lila looked at him steadily. "Sit down." When he landed on the bench next to her, she lowered her voice. "ECP knows she wants out on missions, doofus, but they're not sure she wants to come back." Gino flinched and narrowed his eyes. Lila continued. "Three emotional contact visits in less time than her contract with us, Gino. I don't know what else. They needed to stash her somewhere safe while they figure it out, and we're it."

"Fffff...," Gino started.

"Language, please."

"Fluff fluff FLUFF!" he snapped. "This is not our job, specialing people."

Lila shrugged and resumed her examination of the far corners of Army Pizza. "It's something we can do. I remember doing it before." She contemplated a poster extolling extra cheese. "Thanks, by the way."

"For what?"

"For ratting me out, when I lost it, on the Whale."

"I don't know what you're …"

"Sure, sure," she interrupted him. "But you gotta admit, we did a pretty good job, up there, calming people down, making sure they got what they needed."

"Fluff," he breathed again. Lila didn't comment. "So long as she doesn't hurt us, or mess up someone's skell."

"Yeah, we'll need to watch that."

"And it's gonna be nasty on the profit margin."

"Don't worry about that. Sakuraba's making nice with the ECP, probably."

"Fluuuuuuff," he added without energy. "Makingusbabysitandmediatenandstuff."

Lila snickered.

"What?"

"I just tried to imagine you working alongside Lara Mara."

"He'd snap me like a twig. No thanks. I'll stick with skells."

* * *

 **a/n: Holy cow, did I have to redact a lot of swears. Gino does not say "fluff" in the original, believe me. I weep for him.**

 **Next up: Elaine does her stint at the station, wait ... how did a one-shot musing on BLADE culture get a second part? How is it getting a THIRD part. Settle down, because we'll be lucky if I don't manage a fourth. At least there will be cake.**

(The cake is a lie.)


	3. Rings

**a/n: Elaine has finished her three-week temp job at the refueling station, and the other employees are throwing her a party. She just wishes she could be gone already.**

 **All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, which means none of this crew but all of their scenery.**

* * *

The small dessert pizza looked forlorn, a delicate pink and cream disk surrounded by the grime and heavy machinery of the Sakuraba Auxiliary Skell Refueling Station 01. It rested on a low crate, below the knees of its admirers. (Most of their knees. Twyleth was average Ma-non height, and her knees were accordingly that much closer to the ground.) The thin twisted candle was too pathetic to flout the safety regulations. Gino, Ricky Bobby, Lila and Twyleth all smiled cheerfully at Elaine.

"Congratulations on surviving your stint here," Lila said. The station manager bent to push the pizza and crate towards the celebrant.

Elaine didn't smile back. She had her mouth puckered to avoid giving in to an outright frown. Her arms were crossed, and one foot jiggled almost as much as Gino's constant nervous jangling. Even at her own going-away party, surrounded by the rest of the staff, she was impatient to be gone. "Thanks," she said tightly. She squatted and blew out the candle with a short, efficient puff, then stood up and looked away, toward the official BLADE hangar.

"Pass around the pieces, dumbass," Gino grunted through his uneven, narrow smile. He was struggling to stay upright this afternoon, she noticed. She wasn't going to miss that twitchy mess of a man. How he managed to do a full day's work when he needed to grab onto a skell to stand should have been inspirational. Instead, he annoyed her with his weakness.

She did as she was told. Extra large piece for Ricky Bobby, because he was as tall and broad as mims could be built. Extra large piece for Twyleth, because Ma-non could vacuum up pizza supernaturally. She wasn't going to miss those two either. Twyleth could barely spend a minute to explain things to Elaine before skittering off, and yet the alien dredged up endless patience helping Ricky Bobby. It wasn't fair that she'd feign surprise at Elaine's stupidity and then ignore the hulking screw-up tagging along behind her.

She turned and saw that Lila and Gino had served themselves already. Leaving the smallest piece for Elaine. Typical. She was not going to miss this station.

"This one's for you." The manager handed her the paper plate she'd been holding, adding, "It's got the candle, so, you know, it's yours." Then Lila picked up the smaller remaining piece with her fingers before taking a messy bite. "Do not tell me what's in this, I do not want to know but mmmmmmmm." Her voice was cheerfully muffled.

"Oh! Oh! I can tell you, Lila, if you want to to to know, okay?" Twyleth said excitedly. Elaine wasn't sure if the alien was missing the cues, or ignoring them, or teasing the manager. The mixed wave of denials and laughter in response didn't help her understand. This group, they fought constantly, shouting or hushing in turn, but the fights usually ended in laughter. She didn't get them, didn't want to get them, and now she was done with them. She wasn't going to figure them out in these last minutes.

She was convinced that this had been a punishment assignment. Her superiors must have gotten sick of her close calls out in the field and contracted her out to the station to cool off. She hadn't been happy to join such a bunch of losers, three BLADE rejects plus one tiny anarchist alien, busy selling over-priced fuel to teams too much in a hurry to use the official refueling bays. Every day, Elaine watched with shame as real BLADEs rolled out to do the needed work, while her fellow station employees crashed around in this refuge.

The station was home to the worthless, and Elaine raged to be put in the same category as them, even if only for three weeks. None of the others could be trusted outside of New Los Angeles. Ricky Bobby was too dumb and slow to fight, no kind way to put it; whatever had happened on the Ma-non ship during the attack on NLA that made the aliens call him Shield must have been a fluke. Twyleth was as frail and flighty as all the other Ma-non, relying on brilliant mechanical gimmicks to get what she wanted done. Gino's mim had on-going leg problems that could only be alleviated by constant movement, but even if that were fine, his temper would make him a poor solder. He'd lasted two weeks in BLADE, from what she'd heard. Hot heads didn't last long in the field.

Cool heads didn't last long either.

Elaine realized that Lila was staring at her. Lila Brown would have been a decent fighter, if a little low to the ground. She knew how to move and how to muscle. But, alas, Lila couldn't leave the overhang of the Administrative Area without her mim-based agoraphobia sending her into a blind panic. What strings she'd needed to pull back on Earth to stay on the mission, no one knew. At the start of her three-week contract, Elaine was convinced that Lila had no business surviving. Now she wasn't so sure. Lila was still looking at her intently, with eyes that missed nothing. Not the first flicker of the fuel cycle shut-off light, not the irregular wear on a new customer's skell, not the moment that Gino had to grab the edge of a ladder to keep from falling. Elaine wondered if Lila guessed her thoughts and tried not to cringe.

"You aren't eating. Don't tell me you read the ingredient list and got squeamish. Insect viscera tastes better if you call it chocolate." Lila's eyes didn't carry the humor of her voice.

Elaine shrugged and set her plate down. "I'm gonna cut this short. I gotta get ready for tomorrow."

"Your big big day, okay?" squeaked Twyleth. "I bet the people who know you will be so so so glad to see you again, you know?"

"I'm not working with my old team. The only opening was with the Reclaimers." Elaine shrugged down at the small grey alien.

Behind her, Gino laughed. "Stuck with the grave robbers."

Elaine whipped her head around to glare at him. "What did you say?" she growled. Already her shoulders were back, her fists tight.

Before she could step towards him, he was sprawled on the ground, looking up at Lila with a stunned expression. "Gino, could you not," Lila said. The station manager's face would never have hinted that she'd just ruthlessly kicked her best tech's weak legs out from under him. "They're bringing home our ship. My ship." Her voice wavered slightly, then became casual. "So, yes, that's a good division. You'll do well there, Elaine."

There was a break in the conversation, filled by Ricky Bobby yanking Gino upright and dusting him off with the aid of Twyleth. Again, the Ma-non didn't get the cues, or chose to ignore them, because she continued to slap Gino enthusiastically until he gently pushed her away. Ricky Bobby had stopped already, staring at Elaine and struggling to say something.

"I think," he started slowly, then repeated himself, "I think, if I lost something important, I'd want somebody good looking for it. So they could bring it back to me, I mean."

"Your Lifehold is _very_ important, right?" chirped Twyleth.

"I get it, I get it," Gino muttered. "Reclaimers good, Gino stupid." He dropped into a spare lawn chair with a sulky expression.

"About right," said Lila calmly, rubbing Gino gently on the shoulder. "We're proud to get all the teams out. Every drop of fuel lets them go a little further, fight harder." She shrugged and started gathering up the empty plates and pizza box. "Not like I'm gonna see the rest of Mira, but at least I can send people out with the best chances they can get."

Ricky Bobby smiled brightly. "There's some pretty bits out there. I wanna go see them. Twyleth's been showing me scans from her ship."

"We didn't really see very much, okay? Mostly down and straight into the canyon where we tried to to to hide from the Ganglion, you understand? It wasn't as much as as as we usually like to see when we visit someplace. I think it was mostly desert, right?"

"Oblivia," blurted Elaine. "It's beautiful."

Four faces turned to look at her. She felt her face growing hot. Probably the first time she'd said something that wasn't a complaint or an clipped answer to a direct question. "I have some pictures. If you want to see them." To hide her embarrassment, she pulled out her comm device and started scrolling. Ricky Bobby loomed over one shoulder while Twyleth peered over her elbow as she pulled up this photo or that. Even Gino stood up and leaned on Ricky to get a good look. Lila didn't move, however. She had her own comm device open and was tapping away. Elaine glanced at her and slowed her scrolling. "They're nothing special."

"Let's try something. Send them to my device." Elaine sent one photo, a particularly silly one, and the station's main sign flickered and switched from pixelated ads for skell retread services to a bright daytime scene, with three fat-bellied saltat stacked into a totem pole, their wings spread wide to flash false green eyespots.

"You're gonna get in trouble, increasing the opacity of the sign like that," Gino said with satisfaction.

"I can afford to burn a little electricity today. Send me something else," Lila urged.

Elaine sent photo after photo. A field on a bluff, decorated with orange pompom flowers. Pillars guarding a dusty slot canyon, each carved with a curving mouth gaping at the blue sky. A bottomless rift, hazy lilac shifting to black, surrounded by undercut cliffs spilling plumes of sand and lined with great carved stone tubes. The edge of a wide flat ring, the size of city block, leaning into a calm ocean, as giant crabs danced in front. A green pool fringed by slender trees, the red sand beach repeated in the red traces on each huge leaf. At the water's edge, three BLADES, arms across each others' shoulders, smiled at the camera. Elaine gulped. Before she could swipe it away, Lila had a firm grip on her wrist.

"We'll find the Lifehold," she said quietly. The others were carefully ignoring the two women, gaping up at the marquee. "You'll find the Lifehold, and they won't be lost. I know it." She let go of Elaine's hand. "Let's have a few more."

Most of the others were shots of the various rings sunk into the sands of Oblivia, imposing but similar. Then Lila called out. "Stop. That one. Leave that one up a minute." Elaine looked up at the glowing image. The Great Ring of Oblivia was different from its siblings, and not just because it was taller than any rock formation on the continent. Instead of being a solid wedge, the disk was built from several concentric open rings. More rings, tiny in comparison but each larger than a skell, dotted its face. Railings and platforms echoed and connected the mysterious sections. The edge of Mira's largest moon sliced the sky behind the ring, one curve inverted against the other, as the sky flamed orange and purple and blue at sunset. The photo had been taken from a point in the middle of the main river of Oblivia, a slow-moving, broad strip of water, and its normal dull olive surface was dotted with color.

"That one," said Lila with finality. "So help me, when I get my real body back, I'm gonna stand in that river and stare up at that thing until my legs go numb."

"You won't last a minute," snorted Gino. His normal charm had returned.

"No problem. I'll hire Elaine to keep things from eating me while I gawk." She turned to Elaine. "Okay by you?"

Elaine closed her comm device, and the sign winked out, returning the station to its normal dim and unattractive state. She wouldn't miss working this duty at all, she reminded herself. None of these people mattered to her. She looked at Lila, opened her mouth, and said, "It's a deal." At that moment, she knew she'd be doing exactly that, protecting a virtual stranger in the wilds of Oblivia, as soon as the Lifehold was safe and the tower was green.

* * *

 **a/n: I was told I need to write better intros and be less coy. Okee dokee. My end notes will still be mercilessly oblique, so suffer!**

 **Shameless plug time: Why _is_ Ricky called "Shield of the Ma-non"? Maybe the fic titled that will explain it. (Short version: He wrecked house when some stray Ganglion troops attacked the ship. It was amazing, there is video, and Twyleth is a total fangirl about it.) What's up with Gino's legs? "From Bad to Worse" will explain (short version: someone sabotaged him to get him off the project, but you can't kill a man who's born to hang).**

 **Next up: One week later, and both Nagi and Vandham have reason to visit the station. I'm not sure what to feel about Nagi's visit, but I regret to inform you that Vandham will feature no fluff, much as he considered it, because this story is set pre-hookup. Yes, the slight one-shot will end up having 4 parts.**


	4. Early Report

**a/n: Vandham and Nagi always discuss reports from important missions. That's standard policy. Sometimes the news isn't good.**

 **Some swears because Vandham, spoilers to Ch. 5 at least.**

 **All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, except the unnamed casualties.**

* * *

Commander Vandham had been impatient for the report from the expedition, but when he got a ping at 0400 announcing an emergency briefing, his heart dropped. That was way too early for good news. The team hadn't miraculously found the location of the Lifehold. He hoped no one had died.

One look at Nagi, standing there in his very best uniform, told him his hope wasn't going to be answered. The Secretary of Defense always looked perfectly polished, but Vandham had seen him often enough to know that the man owned good dress gloves and better dress gloves. This morning Nagi was wearing his best ones, reserved for formal occasions. That included when he had to deliver the news of loss to survivors listed as the emotional contacts. So we've lost at least one BLADE, Vandham thought. He knew not to hope that it was only one.

"How do we keep making the same mistakes?" Vandham grunted, skimming the report. The team had been sent to investigate a fragment of the Whale, a promising section that included precious memory banks from the main computer systems. "We know the Ganglion like to booby trap this kind of thing. What is _wrong_ with us?"

"Keep reading. The plan worked. Until it didn't." Nagi drummed his fingers on the table. "I'll be making a trip to the Ma-non ship after this. I've already made the visit for our BLADE."

"Thank you, sir," Vandham said dully. So they'd lost a xeno on the mission too. He didn't think he could have felt worse, but somehow he did. Further down the file, the report reiterated that the ECP had recognized the trap and had begun the planned response. For the first time, the Ma-non had offered their skills at remote data retrieval. To put it baldly, the little squeakers were class-one snoops, voracious in their curiosity and able to get at what they wanted remotely. This had been what had made Vandham so impatient for a report: it was the first xeno-human team that he'd sent out (not counting some of the weirder teams featuring L or that sweet princess of a xeno). Except he'd wanted a good report, one that told him that working with the Ma-non was going to reduce their losses, increase their findings, bring the happy ending everyone in and above New Los Angeles was working for.

The Ganglion weren't stupid and they weren't blind. They must have noted the large party at a nearby temporary station and scrambled to build an attack force. If it weren't for the casualties, he'd be damned proud of his people. Eight BLADEs (plus three Ma-non for whatever that was worth), against an estimated force of over one hundred. They'd managed to hold the fort while the xenos continued to suck up the precious data. Once the Ganglion had tripped the explosions on the wreckage (again, the enemy wasn't stupid), the kids had evacuated the area. One human casualty, one Ma-non, and potentially more information than they'd gleaned from the whole of Frontier Nav in a month.

If it weren't so horrible, he should feel relatively okay with the outcome. But Secretary Nagi was standing there, adjusting his gloves, and Vandham's mood plummeted once again. He had no clue how the Ma-non would react. They were officially pacifists, which made sending their people on BLADE missions very questionable to the group as a whole. However, they were also anarchists, and if some of their members wanted to do more than wait and see, they wouldn't complain (especially since most of them had a growing grudge against the bullies of the universe).

"I'll swing up to their ship tonight," Vandham told Nagi. "See what my buddy Rutantan has to say."

"You think he'll tell you more out of professional courtesy?" Nagi knew that Vandham's unlikely friendship with the Ma-non spokesman had begun as the enthusiasm between two engineers.

"Heavy on the curtesy. I don't pretend we're in the same league as the Ma-non." Vandham looked at the report some more. "Don't recognize the name of their guy. I'll bring Rutantan some pizza-infused vodka and see what else he's willing to let slip."

"We need to know if we still have their support."

"I'll bet all of Army Pizza that we do. I'm not sure we'll have their aid in the field again though. They were skittish when you proposed it. Maybe the quality of the data will be enough, but ..."

"But their losses are permanent, unlike ours." Nagi stated the hardest fact. Human risks were temporary for the individual and imperative for any hope of species survival. A xeno teammate risked losing everything for a gain that wouldn't advance their societies beyond those members trapped on Mira, and maybe not even that.

Vandham swiped to the sheet on the BLADE casualty. His eyes landed on her photo. He swore involuntarily, then snapped his mouth shut. His face contorted in fury.

Nagi looked at him with surprise. "Her contact took the news with less emotion. Mind you, I'm not convinced they were the ones she intended."

Vandham checked the name of the person listed in the field "Emotional Contact". Suddenly, he put the comm device down and slumped in his chair. He rubbed his jaw wearily. "I'll contact her divisions. The old one and the one she just joined. I know Barrett and Elma aren't shy to reach out if they're worried, but I'll save them the effort. Besides, I want to check with her Reclaimer teammates. I need to make sure they're not trying to gloss over something." He tapped his device and looked at Nagi. "This kid switched from Harriers last week. On the one hand, her fighting skills may well have been what helped them hold off the swarm. On the other..." Vandham didn't continue.

"She wasn't fully integrated with the Reclaimers?" suggested Nagi.

"Let's call it that for now. I know she went down fighting. I just want to be sure she was trying to win."

* * *

 **a/n: This is a one-shot that will not die. Feel free to try to beat it senseless with a snow shovel. I'm going to sit quietly and feel bad about creating Elaine.**

 **Next up: Doesn't have a name yet, but it will be loud. Wait, no, it has a name. Melancholia (aka squad selection theme). Turn that volume UP, because that's how some people respond.**


End file.
